6/6/23

 Tuesday, June 6, 2023

In bed at 9, awake at 3:56 and up at 4:10, unable to sleep, feeling unrested. Train whistle blowing on tracks to our east.  60℉, high of 68℉, cloudy, the air still polluted with small particulates from Canadian wildfires, wind N at 8 mph, 2 to 14 mph during the day, gusts up to 24 mph.  Sunrise at 5:13, sunset at 8:27, 15+14.

timeanddate.com provides more precise data re surrise, sunset, twilights, angles of the sun at sunrise and sunset from day to day, length of daylight each day down to hundreths of a second, etc.

D-Day anniversary.  Very few remember, perhaps fewer care.  I was 2 years, 9 months, and 12 days old.  My mother was 6 months pregnant with dear sister Kitty.  My father was in Marine Corps combat training, probably at Camp Pendleton, CA, little knowing but fearing what awaited him on Iwo Jima 8 months later.

VA waiting room thought yesterday.  A trip to the Zablocki VA Medical Center is always someting of an event for me.  It's not like going to an appointment at CSMO or St. Luke's.  It seems to me to be a busier place than those civilian hospitals and medical buildings and that's because it's clientele is exclusively military veterans, mostly old guys (about 90% male, 10% female).  I know that it's projection and mostly in my mind but there seems to be a usually unspoken sense of comradeship in the place based, I suppose, on the old adage that 'all gave some, some gave all.'  I suppose also that the sense of commonality, to the extent that it exists, is supported by the location 'next door' of the Old Soldiers Home and Wood National Cemetery.  Not all but most of these old vets wear some item of clothing, most often a baseball cap, identifying their branch of service and unit and perhaps where and when they served, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan.  For me it's my baseball cap with 1st Marine Air Wing and Vietnam on it.  The visible identifiers often open the door to conversations with other vets in the many waiting rooms in the hospital and elsewhere, as when I stopped in front of Sendik's the other day and had a good conversation with a former Army medic and Vietnam vet accepting donatins for the DAV, Disabled American Veterans charity. . . .  This morning as I waddled into Sendik's as its doors opened, a man of about 50 coming out of the store noticed the pretty subtle gray EGA insignia on my black T shirt and quietly said 'thank you for your service' and I replied, as usual, 'thank you, sir.'   I don't wear the shirt to elicit thanks and I'm hardly a militarist or a supporter of the nation's capitalistic militarism, but more like others wear Brewers or Packers paraphernalia.  Nonetheless, I am touched when strangers are thoughtful enough to offer those thank you's.

    In any case sitting in the waiting room I got to wondering whether a VA hospital physical therapy clinic would make a viable setting for a  dramatic TV series or even a dromedy.  There is such a variety of human beings here, mostly old but also young and middle aged, with all kinds of backgrounds and all kinds of conditions needing therapies. Many walk in unassisted but most rely on at least a cane, many use a walker, a low or high rollator, and some are in wheelchairs.  And the therapists are an interesting group, probably more women than men (though I'm not sure), all seemingly healthy and vigorous, all much younger than their patients, and all in my experience at least caring and supportive of their patients.  To my old eyes, the young women are beautiful and the young men handsome, 'ready for prime time.'  It wouldn't seem to be hard for professional writers (the ones now on strike) to craft an interesting set of stories around such professionals and their patients.   

The awkward robin on the suet feeder.  The most common guests on our suet feeders are woodpeckers, mostly downys and red-bellies but also chickadees and nuthatches and finches.  Lately our suet feeder has been visited by one or more robins, who are unlike the other suet visitors in that they are not acrobatic in landing and moving about the little cage at will.  The robins have to land on top of the cage lean over the cage to nab some seedy suet.  The process seems to be very uncomfortable for them and with the current suet cake half-consumed, it's a real stretch for the robin(s) to reach it.  Their awkwardness and discomfort makes me uncomfortable so this morning around sun-up I placed an empty toilet paper roll on the bottom of the feeder, raising the suet cake to the 'upper chamber' of the suet cage, hopefully making it easier for the robins to reach.  We'll see. . . . At 5:47 a robin arrived on top of the suet feeder and appeared to have an easier time nabbing a piece of suet.  The red-belly also seems to be having an easier time of it.  The house finches are filling up on the oranges. . . Rain-wettened TP tube softened & collapsed.😡

    As I worked on the suet cage, I listened to the morning serenade in front of the house and turned on Merlin when I returned to the house.  The dominating calls were those of the cardinals, robins, and doves but Merlin also identified an oriole, a cowbird, a house wren and Carolina wren (?) and of course our Barkis and Peggottys, the house finches.

Sale of lethal weapons!  I see in this morning's JSOnline our local Sportsmans Warehouse has a sale on Ruger 9mm handguns, pistols, a mere $299, $200 off the regular price.  They aren't quite as lethal as AR-15 long guns, but a lot easier to carry concealed to a bar, a party, a church, or a school.  Valid June 1 to June 13, come and getem.

Organized religion, democracy,  lethality.  While waiting for a haircut and beard trim, I read Sunday's newletter by Heather Cox Richardson about our holy friend Patriarch Kirill of the Russian Orthodox Church.  He has awarded the First Degree of the Order of Glory and Honor from the Russian Orthodox Church to Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán under whose rule democracy has been in large measure subverted in Hungary.  His Grand Holiness Kirll and much of his Church and its True Believers have also been great supporters of Vladimir Putin's war of naked aggression against the people of Ukraine, which seems to become continually more barbaricl and less Christian, to the extent that any war of agression can be said to be 'Christian,'  Yesterday the Russians blew up the dam on the Dneiper River at Kherson forcing the evacuation of thousands of Ukrainians, flooding hundreds of small communities, threatening the drinking waters of thousands of civilians, and potentially threatening the ability to provide vital cooling to the huge nuclear power plant at Zaporizhzhia.  "Morality is doing what is right, no matter what you are told.  Religion is doing what you are told, no matter what is right." — H.L. Mencken

Text from an old Pearls Before Swine cartoon strip:

Rat to Pig:  Do you think humanity is destined to destroy itself?

Pig to Rat: Oh, no.  I believe in Butterboy.

 Rat to Pig:  Who the heck is Butterboy.

Pig to Rat:  A giant stick of butter who will arrive one sunny day and save the planet and rescue humanity.

Rat to Pig: A giant stick of butter would melt after about 5 minutes in the sun.

Pig to Rat: I am so bad at picking religions.  

Demonstrations by White Frenchmen vs. Demonstrations by Black Americans.  For weeks now, les Francais by the thousands have been in the streets demonstrating against PM Macron's raising the retirement age from 62 to 64.  The demonstations have occasionally been violent, burning vehicles, fighting les gendarmes, etc.  In the United States, demonstrations by Blacks (and their increasingly many non-Black supporters) have been occasioned usually by the killing of unarmed Black men and even Black children.  An interesting comparison, a modest increase in retirement age vs. homicidal behavior by government agents against non-threatening citizens based largely on race.

Progress (of sorts) on THE BOXES.  I went down to the basement to start sorting out, saving, and discarding the boxes I opened days ago.  I thought perhaps I could start by moving the stuff from either my painting table or office desk onto a clean table in .the old workroom.  That plan evaporated as soon as I  sat down at the butcher block desk and made the mistake of picking up pieces of paper and actually reading them.  So much stuff!  A history of St. Leo Parish and the grade school and high school I attended.  My grandfather Dewey Clausen's death certificate from Sarasota County, FL.  Correspondence from the National Personnel Records Center in St Louis to my father re: his DD214 from 1945.  My father's 1997 POA naming me his agent.  Several of the Dove Notes I composed and sent to donors of the House of Peace and an unsuccessful grant proposal I wrrote only to be undermined by Br. Bob Smith, stirring a very nasty memory.  Notes I made in research done while writing my memoir.  Photocopies of microfiche pages from the 1947  Chicago newspaper reports on the assault on my mother, including a large photograph of the 15 year old rapist, looking very much like a child.  I managed to put a handful of papers into a discard box.  It's a start. but I feel like an inadequate Hercules looking at the Augean stables.

PGA to merge with Saudi LIV.  Shameless.  Scandalous. Disgraceful.  Mohammed bin Salman.  Jamal Khashoggi. Murder. Dismemberment.

Money, Money  Liza Minelli

Money makes the world go around
The world go around
The world go around
Money makes the world go around
It makes the world go 'round

A mark, a yen, a buck or a pound
A buck or a pound
A buck or a pound
Is all that makes the world go around
That clinking, clanking sound
Can make the world go 'round

Money makes the world go around
The world go around
The world go around
Money makes the world go 'round
The clinking, clanking sound of
Money, money, money, money
Money, money, money, money
Get a little, get a little
Money, money, money, money
Mark, a yen, a buck or a pound
That clinking, clanking, clunking sound
Is all that makes the world go 'round
It makes the world go 'round!